


time to grow

by owlinaminor



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/F, Gen, Post-Finale, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 23:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20825303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: a collection of short fics mostly taking place in/around/after the amnesty finale.  includes: lots of soft danbrey, mama as a secret romantic, duck newton tree metaphors, etc.





	1. babe

**Author's Note:**

> the adventure zone amnesty, huh? hell of a ride, am i right? i've got a big project in the works for this arc, but while i plan out (read: procrastinate on) that, i thought it would be fun to celebrate all of amnesty's incredible characters by taking prompts. thank you to everyone who has sent me ideas so far!
> 
> none of these are beta'd, so holler if you see any typos.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> isabel requested: danbrey, with something about Aubrey being Puerto Rican

> **isabel requested: danbrey, with something about Aubrey being Puerto Rican**

“Okay, so the way my mama always did it was, meat, and then rice, and then veggies,” Aubrey says. And then pauses, arm extended halfway across the counter. “Or is it meat and then veggies and then rice? Fuck.”

Dani grins, perched on a stool across the counter with her chin pillowed in her hands. She smiles wider now, after what Aubrey’s been calling the Big Intergalactic Final Battle and what Duck’s been calling Worst Thursday. Wide enough, now, that the fluorescent kitchen light glints off her molars, just too sharp to be human.

“Does the order really matter?” Dani asks. “I mean, it’ll taste great anyway, right?”

“No, babe, the timing is important,” Aubrey replies, rolling up her sleeves to switch the stove on. And then— “Wait. What did I just say?”

Dani is still smiling, but the curve of it is slightly sharper now. “Babe,” she says. “You called me babe.”

Aubrey leans back, puts her hands up behind her head. She’s cool. She’s cool! She saved the world—two words—a whole universe, actually. Flirting with her girlfriend should be nothing.

“Okay, well,” she replies, “you just said it back. Just now.”

“I guess I did…” And Dani leans forward, blonde hair falling over the counter, nearly mixing with the bowls of peppers and half-shelled peas. “… babe.”

And Aubrey… Aubrey maybe needs to reevaluate her parameters for _nothing._ She leans in on instinct, in self-defense, presses into Dani’s sharp smile. They kiss for as long as it’s comfortable, one of Dani’s hands coming up to hold Aubrey in place as one of Aubrey’s hands drops to brace against the counter, and it’s all slow, slow warmth.

“How does it feel to be kissed by a god, babe?” Aubrey says, grinning as she stands up straight.

Dani rolls her eyes, like she’s at all good at pretending to be annoyed. “Okay, you’re not really sharing space with a god anymore, but it’s still pretty good.”

Aubrey bounces on the tip of her toes, then leans back over the counter. Dani meets her: runs a finger along Aubrey’s cheek, up into her hair, tugs at the curls over her forehead.

“Actually, in a way, it’s better,” Dani says quietly. “Now I know it’s just you.”

The flame under the frying pan shoots out in a long burst and ignites the bottle of apple cider vinegar. _Sssssh-pop!_ It shatters across the counter in a sea of glass, Dani stepping back just in time to avoid a shard in her palm.

_“Fuck!” _Aubrey shouts. “That was the secret ingredient!”

Dani laughs, and then she steps around the counter carefully, picking her way over the broken glass, and presses into Aubrey’s side. “Sorry,” she says, voice still soft, like a secret or a promise. “I’ll help you clean it up. And then we can try again.”

“Alright, but you need to stay at least five feet away from me the whole time I’m making the fried rice,” Aubrey replies, her voice holding absolutely no tone of warning at all. “You’re a hazard to the whole process.”

Dani nuzzles into Aubrey’s hair, her nose tickling Aubrey’s ear. “Whatever you say, babe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the wonderful amy (@amythyst_art on twitter) drew some [lovely art](https://twitter.com/amythyst_art/status/1176734697423953921) of this one


	2. "what'd I miss?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> elaine requested: mama, stern, and barclay hanging out at the archway while everything’s going down.

> **elaine requested: mama, stern, and barclay hanging out at the archway while everything’s going down**

“So,” Madeline says. “What’d I miss?”

“Well, uh.” Barclay clears his throat, takes a deep breath, then dives in. “Amnesty Lodge is in FBI custody. I mean—you knew that. Everyone’s staying at Duck and Leo’s building, there’s a free apartment—oh, uh, Leo, you know Leo from the general store, he’s also got powers, kinda, he was connected to Minerva before Duck was—actually, do you know Minerva? She’s this alien warrior who was connected to Duck, and before that Leo, and now also Dr. Drake, through portals. Not like the video game. Do you know that video game? Also, Aubrey and Dani want to move in together—I’m not supposed to know that so don’t tell her I told you, but you can join the pool on how much money they spend at Ikea if you want. Uh.”

Barclay pauses, four fingers held up and his hand suspended, as though waiting for the next item to come to him.

Before he can go on, though, Madeline nods at him from her own perch a few crates over, and says, “Thanks for the update, Barclay, but I wasn’t actually talking to you.” And then she turns to Agent—or, well, no longer Agent, she supposes—Stern, standing sentry over by the door to the rest of the compound.

“Hey, Joe,” she yells. “What the _fuck_ happened on the last few episodes of the Bachelorette?”

“Don’t distract me like this, Ms. Cobb!” Stern hollers back, even though she can tell from his stance that he’s loosened up already. “I’m trying to defend us against the full force of the American intelligence machine!”

“The full force of the American intelligence machine can eat my ass,” she replies. (Barclay is looking back and forth between them like he just walked into the U.S. Open with no prior knowledge of tennis.) “I need to know what happened to Hannah Brown. You’ve kept this from me for months, man, come on!”

And, of course, he passively supported her capture, property seizure, interrogation, and several other rights violations she doesn’t even know the terminology for. But this one is easier to shout across a quiet twilight. The path to forgiveness starts small, or some shit like that.

Stern must clock some of this, because the line of his shoulders sags, and then he’s crossing the space just like he used to cross the living room on Monday nights, every step careful as though he’s watching his back. Or hers.

He sits down on the crate next to Barclay, and then he process to recount, with the precision, passion, and tight grasp of plot only a trained intelligence agent could manage, the story of Miss Alabama Hannah, a plucky young Bachelorette just looking for love. Madeline nods and gasps and yells as appropriate through the Luke drama, four times in a windmill, Jed’s betrayal, and all the way to the final rose.

“Well,” she says at last, as Stern explains that, really, this season was all about Hannah learning to love herself. “That brave girl really did it. Is it weird that I’m proud of her?”

“To be clear, this is—it _is _a reality TV show, right?” Barclay asks. “Like, cheesy music, and tons of makeup, and some execs in LA probably orchestrating the whole thing?”

Madeline and Stern glare at him. He sighs and holds up his hands. “Alright, alright, sorry.”

“Now,” Stern says, turning back to her, “just wait until I catch you up on Bachelor in Paradise.”

Madeline grins, adjusts her posture so that she’s settled in for the long haul. She wonders if there’s any chance to get some reinforcements to bring them a pizza.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea where this headcanon of mama and stern watching the bachelor franchise shows together came from, but it’s part of my personal canon now.


	3. savior of the universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> amy requested: danbrey + tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let it be known that I didn't really follow the prompt here, but it sure is soft! also, I wrote this before the final episode came out, so imagine that this is actually happening in the castle in sylvain or something.

> **amy requested: danbrey + tea**

It’s ten-seventeen A.M. when Aubrey first stirs.

Dani watches the slow motion of it, from next to her on the bed. Her eyelashes flutter first, delicate, like wings of a hummingbird landing, choosing the perfect flower, the best color and texture. Her eyelashes, and then her mouth: dark red lips, still stained with magenta because of course Aubrey had to put on make-up even for a battle, just in case the extraterrestrial planetary force questioned whether she was goth. Her mouth opens, like the beginning of a yawn, and maybe that’s the flower, the one the hummingbird is landing on. Dani has never been good at metaphors, and anyway she knows nothing about Earth biology, but she wants to suddenly—wants to sprint to the library and slam every book down on the old wood tables in turn, dust flying, and take color-coded notes and memorize it all with flashcards, just so that she has enough language to describe this properly. Aubrey waking up.

Her eyelashes, then her mouth, then her arms, reaching: up from beneath the covers, through the pool of sunlight collecting on the pillow, towards the headboard. Dani by all rights should stop her, should say something or put a hand out, but she’s helpless, rendered mute by the way the sun catches on Aubrey’s skin, golden-brown, and ignites the red dye in her hair.

And so Aubrey bangs her hands against the headboard, and blinks and sits up, joints and bones and arteries all revving into motion together.

“Ow,” she says. And then, turning to Dani, “Hey.”

It should be illegal, the way Aubrey’s grinning right now. It should be contained in a secure location or otherwise bottled up in a museum, ten bucks for entry and five minutes allotted gaze time per guest.

“Hey,” Aubrey says again. She takes one hand and runs a finger along Dani’s thigh, easy, as though it belongs there. “You good?”

Dani brings her hands up to her face, closes her eyes against the light still coming in through her fingertips. And then against Aubrey, gently lifting one hand off and then the other, careful and warm.

“It’s just—you saved the world,” Dani says. “Two worlds. You saved the _universe,_ you shared a body with a _god, _and now you’re just _here—_like, you should be in a palace with gold, waited on, getting the best of everything.”

Aubrey, still holding both of Dani’s hands, picks up first one, then the other. Presses kisses to her knuckles, her palms, her wrists. Each touch impossibly soft, like she should be floating, like Dani should be dreaming this whole thing.

“You’re the best of everything,” Aubrey says, into Dani’s palm. “I lived for you, you know. I was careful for you.”

Dani curls her fingers around Aubrey’s face, then drags her up—to kiss her, yeah, it’s the only natural reaction to something like that, but also to hold, to pull Aubrey’s curls into the crook of her neck and watch the way the light dances with the red and brown and gold, and to breathe in. Breathe in. Aubrey smells like sweat and dirt and something deeper, like the quarries beneath Sylvain, like charcoal left after a campfire. She hasn’t showered since—well, no one has.

“Okay,” Dani says. “Okay.” She tightens her fingers in Aubrey’s hair, listens as Aubrey breathes, thinks. “Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna go get us some tea and lemon poppyseed muffins, you know, from that bakery on Oak Street, and then we’re gonna get crumbs all over Duck’s spare bed, and then we’re gonna take the longest shower known to human or Sylven, and then we’re gonna sleep for another twelve hours.”

“Twelve hours?” Aubrey repeats.

“Twelve, minimum. Because you saved the universe, and you deserve it.”

Aubrey shifts: kisses the crook of Dani’s neck and then blinks up at her, eyes flickering orange in the sunlight. She was a hero, and she was holding a god, but now she’s just here, a body in the bed. A heart beating, and all the skin and blood and cartilage required to carry it.

“Okay,” Aubrey says, taking Dani’s hand in hers and squeezing like the sky would tear if she let go. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> amy has done some [absolutely gorgeous art](https://twitter.com/amythyst_art/status/1176170566295810050) for this one as well <3


	4. "you fight good."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mama and minerva, after the battle. this one was basically a request from me to myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fully love and respect justin’s choices and I'm really warming up to duck/minerva (largely due to all the great artists who have started drawing it). but at the same time, like, death of the author, it brings me great joy to imagine minerva as a lesbian and so, to me, she is a lesbian.

> **mama and minerva, after the battle. this one was basically a request from me to myself.**

“MADELINE COBB!”

Madeline turns. She’s practically asleep on her feet, room spinning faintly, fluorescent light over Duck’s kitchen table going fuzzy—something about getting rescued from an FBI compound and then thrown into an intergalactic battle for your planet will do that to ya—but the voice pulls her, like magnets, like gravity. It’s a deep voice, Minerva’s got. A voice that rises from her toes, or from the very core of the Earth.

And so she turns—of course she turns, pivots on one heel and then the other, faces the shadows of Duck’s living room, the empty beer bottles and pizza boxes from their impromptu party, the deeper shadow of Minerva, standing, smiling bright in the reflected moonlight through the windows, her head nearly brushing the ceiling. It makes Madeline dizzy just looking at her.

“Madeline Cobb,” Minerva repeats, softer this time. Duck has been teaching her about dynamics, he said between drinks, between bouts of laughter. Something about old jazz records. She wants to learn the trombone.

“Yeah?” Madeline replies.

Minerva takes a step forward and raises one hand, as though drawing a sword. Her sword is sheathed, propped up against Duck’s coat rack, sitting quiet among the uniform jackets and the ranger hats, so she must be reaching for something else. A ghost, maybe, or a piece of courage. Madeline bends her knees in response, just slightly. Lowers her center of gravity. They fought together like this, a few hours ago or a million years ago, Minerva all fluid motion and Madeline planted firmly, the kind of lever and fulcrum that could move galaxies or at least one fucking maniacal spaceship. A few hours ago or a million years ago. God. She’s asleep on her feet but one motion in the wrong direction and Minerva could be back there, just outside herself, arms taut and lungs heaving.

And then Minerva says, “Have you seen the movie Disney’s Mulan, Madeline Cobb?”

Madeline pauses. Straightens. Considers. “I think so,” she says. “I’m a little old for it, but in college I used to babysit—” Those kids in Providence, yeah, they always had fresh oranges in the apartment and she’d let them stay up just enough past their bedtime that they were sound asleep when their parents got back. Yeah. “Yeah. I’ve seen it. Why?”

Minerva grins, baring her teeth in an expression Madeline almost recognizes—like the expression she wore on the spaceship, spinning through enemies, only softer. Dynamics, Duck said. She’s learning about dynamics. _Forte_ to _mezzo-forte_, _piano _for emphasis.

“You fight good,” Minerva says.

She says it, and then she lifts one hand to her hip. Almost as though she’s holding her breath. As though this was something monumental, heavy. Like a gate opening.

Madeline isn’t sure how to respond.

“It’s—it’s a line from the movie,” Minerva goes on, filling the space and shrinking somehow, as though—as though Madeline has made her nervous somehow, imagine that, maybe she’s still got it. “Mulan has just saved her country, very noble, and Li Shang says to her, you fight good. When we watched it, Duck said that was flirting. Is it flirting? I wanted flirting.”

And maybe it’s because Madeline is still dizzy with the past few hours or few hundred years—the freedom, the finality—or maybe she’s just dizzy with this, a tall woman in Duck Newton’s living room, standing like a redwood with whole civilizations growing in her ribs—maybe she just wants to touch, to see if Minerva vibrates on her frequency. Maybe it’s none of those things. The only finality of it is this: Madeline walks forward, five steps, and leans up, and presses a kiss to Minerva’s cheek.

Minerva’s skin is warm. And she is tall, booming, but easily caught: easy enough for her to shift, kiss Madeline properly. As though this is a new kind of weight. As though this is why they saved the world.

“Was _that_ flirting?” Minerva asks, when they come up for air.

And Madeline laughs, and laughs, and says yes.


	5. photosynthesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> amy requested: aubrey + duck bonding, found family sibling vibes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, a biology student who did a research project on trees, the minute duck newton was conceived: oh i'm gonna write so many tree metaphors about that dude

> **amy requested: aubrey + duck bonding, found family sibling vibes**

The ship is cold—almost unpleasant, after the sun-soaked warmth of the crystal, after Dani’s smile. Aubrey opens her eyes and then blinks, rubs first her left eye and then her right, readjusts. Steel and chrome and distant light. Legs and feet and arms. How strange it is, to have a body—her stomach rumbles, and fuck, she’d forgotten to be hungry for a few minutes.

“I might have some gorp in my pocket,” Thacker says, rummaging. “If those assholes didn’t take it.”

Aubrey shakes her head as vigorously as she can manage. “No. Thanks, Thacker, but no. No.”

“Alright, alright,” he replies, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Nobody likes the gorp. I get it.”

Mama grins, mouths _good taste_ at Aubrey—and fuck, _fuck,_ this is going to be the last time she sees Mama, isn’t it. Her heart drops straight to her feet.

Duck looks at her. He takes a step forward and then stops, hesitant, in the center of the room. Strange how he can leap and dive, stab into the center of an alien civilization and force it to short-circuit, and then a few minutes later he can stand in front of Aubrey like he’s standing in front of an old pine tree and say, quiet—

“You chose Sylvain, didn’t you.”

Aubrey’s been careful all day. Well, careful is a relative term, but she’s forced herself to take deep breaths before leaping, ask questions before launching a flame. Dani asked her to stay alive, and so she’s protected herself. She’s held back—not the magic but something close to it, the nerve endings and the tinder—and she’s tired of it.

She runs forward and throws her arms around Duck.

He’s stiff at first—just like a tree would be, she supposes, new hardwood in the spring and changing colors in the fall—and then his arms come up to encircle her. Holding her shoulders, letting her sob silently against his chest. She wonders, not for the first time, if a man who spends so much time in the forest could pick up something about photosynthesis. Absorbing sunlight, transforming it, and sending it back out. This whole spaceship is cold steel and chrome, but Duck Newton is warm.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay. Go stay with your girlfriend. I get it.”

Aubrey pulls away, eyes wide. “Wait, my—my _girlfriend? Duck, _what the hell!We haven’t had that talk yet!”

Duck laughs, big and booming, and she tries not to think about this being the last time she’ll hear it. “Yeah, you just kissed and agreed to move in together and told all your friends about it.”

She rolls her eyes—okay, yeah, he’s got a point, but communication is _important,_ and this is definitely the first thing she’s asking Dani when she gets to Sylvain.

“Hey, Aubrey,” Duck says. He’s still got a hand on her shoulder, keeping her steady. “I’m proud of you. Is that weird for me to say?”

It’s a little weird, but only as weird as everything else about him. As weird as the way he considers every question like he’s running a video game in his head, and the way he treads lightly on forest paths to watch for salamanders, and the way he can’t lie to save his life. God, she’s gonna miss him.

“Only if it isn’t weird for me to say that I’m proud of you too, Duck,” she replies. She wipes at her eyes, then laughs as he pulls her back in for another hug.

And then she hugs Mama, and she salutes Minerva, and she nods to Vincent and Thacker, and when they go through the portal she feels Duck’s smile on her back. Wide and warm.


	6. stupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a tumblr anon requested: “Hollis still has a crush on Jake and thinks he’s cute but is a grumpy goblin about it”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing this one kinda made me wish I knew how to ski or snowboard (I very distinctly Do Not Know How To Ski Or Snowboard)

> **a tumblr anon requested: “Hollis still has a crush on Jake and thinks he’s cute but is a grumpy goblin about it”**

The thing is, Jake’s not even that good at snowboarding.

He’s capable, sure. He can do the pizza and the French fries, he can twist and jump, he can get down the highest peak without running into any trees. But there’s no finesse, the way Jake does it—the way he throws his arms out and laughs, bright pink beanie nearly slipping off his head, blonde hair shining in the sun. The way he runs back to the lodge limbs flailing, rips of his boots and tosses them in the lobby, orders ten hot chocolates with extra marshmallows and downs them two at a time. The way he sits up whenever Hollis comes in and grins, starts yelling about routes and stunts and the snowstorm that might roll in next week, the way he—shit. It’s like he’s not trying to show off or be the best or even master a particular technique but is actually enjoying himself out there, just the sun glistening on the snow and the white-capped trees and the bright blue sky above it all, smiling down. Like this is all he wants.

Hollis asks him about it, the first snow after what the Hornets have started calling the Kepler-pocalypse. It’s some ridiculous time, like eight AM on a Saturday, but Jake had come by and banged on their door all bundled up and rosy-cheeked from the cold insisting that the snow was _perfect_ and they needed to go out on the slopes _right the fuck now,_ so. Here they are. One hill down, sitting on their boards at the top of the second, waiting for the wind to die down a bit, or waiting for someone to come and yell at them, or waiting for a monster to rise up from beneath the drifts. Or just waiting. Jake does this a lot, after the Kepler-pocalypse. Sitting very still and staring at the tree line, like this is high school English and he’s been asked to find a hidden meaning in the pattern of oaks and pines. Hollis hates it.

So Hollis turns, faces Jake head-on under the December sky, faces his red cheeks and golden hair and pink beanie.

“Why do you look like that when you snowboard?” Hollis says.

Jake shakes himself, as though waking from a dream, and turns to Hollis. “Like what?”

“Like…” Hollis struggles to come up with the best word. “Stupid.”

“You always think I look stupid.”

This is because Jake always _does_ look stupid: stupid hair curling with sweat after a long day outside, stupid eyes wide and blue when they watch a movie, stupid surprisingly-strong arms helping with renovations at Amnesty Lodge. But this is a special kind of stupid, which Hollis tries to describe: he’s always smiling as he rides the snow, even when it’s ten below and the wind is howling, even after he’s made a wrong move and pitched into a snowdrift.

Jake squishes his face up while Hollis talks, and that’s stupid too—makes him look like he’s just swallowed something sour. Gives Hollis the stupid urge to pinch his cheeks, or get in real close and unfold him, press inside, taste.

“I guess it’s just, like—back home,” Jake says, and Hollis knows he means Sylvain, “we didn’t have slopes like this. No snow, at least not where I’m from. And even if there was snow, I couldn’t be out on it like we do here. I always had to be working, or fighting, or—anyway. Just being able to ride down a hill like we do, not having anywhere else to be or anything else I have to think about—maybe I look stupid but that’s fine, because it’s the most incredible thing in the world for me. I still feel like I don’t really deserve it, I guess.”

“You do deserve it,” Hollis says, the words spilling out of their mouth. They clench their teeth, a dam against the rest of it—_You deserve everything._

Jake grins at them, dazzling. “Thanks, dude.”

And when Jake stands, and offers a hand to Hollis to pull them up after him, maybe his warm palm meets theirs with something like an electric shock, maybe they hold on a little too long. Maybe, when they fly down the hill, eight in the morning and sun shining and no other people for miles, Hollis tries throwing out their arms and grinning, too.


	7. texture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @16bit_drifter requested: beacon interacting with someone (not duck) carrying him

> **@16bit_drifter requested: beacon interacting with someone (not duck) carrying him**

Beacon has been sitting on this desk for thirteen hours and forty-seven minutes. In that time, he has mentally constructed and played out five intergalactic wars, written a short textbook on battle strategy, and reorganized the contents of Duck Newton’s cabinets. The man cannot group similar nonperishables to save his life. He’s about to set in on organizing the cases of beer near the refrigerator according to who would drink from each when there’s the low _thud thud thud_ of someone walking into the kitchen, followed by a voice.

“Duck? You up yet? I know it’s early, but I found somethin’ interesting, and I wanted to—oh, hello there.”

There’s a shape looming over Beacon, a wrinkled brown hand coming down, and then he makes contact. Every human has a texture, he has learned—a unique signature he can sense and log, a lens through which he can gather all their rage and their love, their hopes and dreams and fears. Leo is smooth and sturdy, like the brick of an old schoolhouse or a crumbling castle. Duck is rough and thick, jagged edges sometimes and soft patches other times, like the bark of an ancient oak tree that modulates with the seasons and the threats of predators. Lady Flame, she picked him up once, she is thin and sharp like blown glass, like a mirror or a magnifying glass that can focus faraway sunlight into one sharp point.

This new person, this old man who picks Beacon up now, is cool and smooth with jagged patches, like a rocky outcropping on the peak of a mountain. He’s a warrior—might not call himself that, might call himself an adventurer or a naturalist, but Beacon can tell he’s comfortable in empty spaces, comfortable in anger and in loneliness. He likes to sit alone in the sunlight and listen to the wind, he likes to watch hawks circle and then dip over the pines, he likes to walk until he forgets the sound of his own voice. But there’s something else here, too—beneath the knotted beard and wrinkled skin is a slow-burning fire, a molten core, the inside of a volcano waiting for the right moment to explode out into the sea. _Show yourself,_ Beacon tells it, and it bellows at him in an ancient language, bellows and snarls and spits fire until he leaves it be. Alright. A battle for later, then.

_I’ve never met one like you before,_ he says to the fingers now curled along his handle, lifting him and pointing towards the cabinets. _You’ve got layers like a cake. Delicious._

He’s expecting a jolt of fear, at that—it’s the typical reaction, and overwhelmingly the sane one, at least for lower life forms such as these.

But the man only laughs, and says, “Oh, a talking sword. Nice. What can you do, huh?”

What can you do, as though Beacon is a fucking butter knife!

_I am Beacon, destroyer of worlds, _Beacon snarls, thrumming red-hot. _I am the harbinger of justice. I am the beginning and the end. I am the smiling face behind the Reaper’s scythe. I am—_

“An intergalactic weapon, got it,” the man says—says, as though he’s making observations about wildflowers in a little spiral notebook! As though the number of petals on a sunflower and the grand purpose of a great weapon are at all comparable! As though Beacon’s destiny can be reduced to pencil scratches, flattened beneath blue-lined paper, thrown down and trampled in the dirt! Beacon begins to vibrate, pulling at the red-hot core beneath this _infuriating_ old man and taunting, _fight me head-on, get out here and show me what you’re made of, let’s see what anger really tastes like—_

“Hey, Thacker, what’re you doing with Beacon?”

Another set of footsteps. Another shadow beneath the kitchen lights. And another hand—Beacon is passed, from the lonely-wrinkled-hiding grip to a familiar one, a tree-trunk grip, a shade-on-a-hot-day grip.

“Just testin’ it out,” the old man says. “I can’t believe you didn’t show me this before, man, it’s incredible. Just holding onto it for a couple’ve minutes made me feel like I could level a mountain or somethin’.”

Duck sighs. “Yeah, he does that to you. Don’t you, Beacon?”

Beacon twists in his hand, projects volcanoes and forest fires and distant screams. _Do not talk to me like a pet, Duck Newton, this man was showing me immense disrespect, he felt no fear when he handled me, he was ready to sketch me in one of his little notebooks, he—_

“That’s just Thacker,” Duck says. “He’s kinda weird, but he’s harmless. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

_Didn’t mean it my ASS—_

“Beacon, you don’t even have an ass. Come on. I’m putting you back in my sock drawer.”

And Beacon goes, snarling all the way. It’s funny—or, not funny, but some terrible opposite of funny—that Duck is the only person who can hold onto him when he’s like this, all captured heat and reflected fire. Duck can hold onto him, and Duck is rough and cool and ancient like an oak tree in winter, and Duck is the dark quiet of the sock drawer and the way Beacon falls into something like sleep, finally. And it is moments like these, the tree and the sock drawer, that make Beacon think maybe this grand destiny of his will come to pass, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... beacon pov is fun as hell?! I love this angry little sword.


	8. "safe now."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a tumblr anon requested: “some taz wlw? canon, non-canon, amnesty, balance, romantic, platonic, whatever you're vibin with atm"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> naturally, I ended up combining amnesty wlw and balance wlw for maximum power.

> **a tumblr anon requested: “some taz wlw? canon, non-canon, amnesty, balance, romantic, platonic, whatever you're vibin with atm"**

_“Aubrey.”_

Aubrey sits up fast, all her limbs moving in tandem as though pulled by invisible magnets. She rubs at her eyes, adjusting: the soft light of dawn shifting the shadows between the trees, the thick scent of resin and charcoal that hangs throughout these places where the Quell had its strongest hold, the birds calling out to each other to greet the morning. And Dani leaning over her, eyes very wide and very blue.

“What’s up?” Aubrey asks, starting to unzip her sleeping bag. “Is something wrong?”

“No—I just—the opposite,” Dani replies. She sounds breathless, as though she’d just been running.

“Okay, so—something’s right?” Aubrey fumbles with the end of the zipper then starts to swing her legs out. But Dani puts a hand on her chest and lightly pushes her back down, then sits on the edge of the fabric.

Aubrey takes her hand—her palm is cool, like the morning dew. “Seriously, what’s up?” she asks. “You’re making me nervous.”

“They’re back,” Dani says. “I got to the part in the finale. I thought they were gone, I cried for an hour, and you just _let me,_ you _let me believe they were gone, _but they _aren’t,_ they’re _back _and it’s _so beautiful Aubrey I’m about to start crying again—”_

Her grip on Aubrey’s hand is tightening as she talks, her voice getting faster like an engine revving up—and then she _does_ start crying, lifting her other hand up to her face to cover the sobs.

“It’s so beautiful,” she says again. “It’s so beautiful.”

Aubrey uses their joint hands to pull Dani closer, close enough to press their chests together, Aubrey’s ratty MCR T-shirt against Dani’s homemade Amnesty Lodge sweatshirt, Aubrey’s other hand coming up to rub circles into Dani’s back. Aubrey could use at least one more hour, full sunlight, and two cups of coffee to figure this out—actually, make that three, there’s no way to brew real coffee out here so they have to make do with an electric tea kettle and some instant bullshit that tastes like caffeinated pondwater. But Aubrey doesn’t have any of those things, not even the caffeinated pondwater. She only has Dani, shaking softly and saying something like, “You’re safe now, we’re all safe now, we’re all safe now”—

Wait a second.

“Dani,” Aubrey says. She takes Dani’s shoulders in her hands and pushes her gently out, enough that she can see Dani’s face. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail, blonde curls shining faintly in the growing sunlight, and her eyes are red-rimmed from crying and her lips are chapped from weeks in the woods, and still Aubrey forgets her train of thought for a second, because this is the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen and she needs to remember this so that she can write it down later.

And then she remembers that this beautiful girl is literally _her girlfriend,_ they _travel the world together doing heroic shit,_ and she pushes forward.

“Dani,” Aubrey says. “Were you, by any chance, listening to part two of Story and Song, the finale of The Adventure Zone: Balance?”

Dani nods, and when she lifts her head she’s smiling. “Yeah,” she replies. “I thought that was obvious.”

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry.” Aubrey presses her face into Dani’s shoulder to hide how it’s starting to go red. “It is obvious, it’s totally obvious, I had the exact same reaction when I heard it. Not only are Sloane and Hurley _not dead_, they’re fucking _kickass dryads_ that _save Merle’s daughter from the Hunger?_ It’s like, fucking Griffin McElroy heard everyone yelling at him for burying the gays and—”

“And unburied them!” Dani says. “I know! And now they’re like, deliberately placed in the narrative as role models, and protectors of their city, and—”

“I _know.”_ Aubrey sits back up, embarrassment fading, to look at Dani better. Her eyes are still red, but she’s smiling now—and then sun might as well go back to sleep for the rest of the day, because this is all the energy Aubrey—no, Sylvain—no, fuck it, the entire _universe_ needs.

“You gotta keep listening though, babe,” Aubrey tells her. “It keeps getting better.”

“How can it get better than _Sloane and Hurley returning from the dead—”_

“Trust me. You do trust me, right?”

“What a stupid question. And yeah, come on, we can listen together while we get breakfast going.” Dani untangles herself and stands, then offers a hand to Aubrey. Maybe it’s because the morning is coming on, or it’s because she’s been leeching heat from Aubrey, but her palm is warmer now. A tiny fire, or the reflection of Aubrey’s.

She pulls Aubrey up, and then Aubrey pulls her close—they need to get breakfast going, and they need to finish listening to this fucking Dungeons and Dragons podcast, and they need to bring life back to Sylvain, yeah, okay, but first: Aubrey needs to kiss Dani, soft, under the trees. Just to celebrate that they’re both here, both in these bodies with all their bones and arteries. Both breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> according to my gf (who has been a taz listener from the beginning), the balance fandom on ao3 started out as a bunch of wlw who were really into sloane/hurley?! what a beautiful time. also, don’t ask me how dani is listening to balance in the middle of the sylvain wilderness, it literally doesn’t matter.

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) or [tumblr](https://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/) <3


End file.
